PROLEGOMENA 65 



himself can draw or model; none comes near him in 

 the scope, variety, and exactness of vocal imitation; 

 none is such a master of gesture; while he seems to be 

 impelled thus to imitate for the pure pleasure of it. And 

 there is no such another emotional chameleon. By a 

 purely reflex operation of the mind, we take the hue 

 of passion of those who are about us, or, it may be, the 

 complementary colour. It is not by any conscious "put- 

 ting one's self in the place" of a joyful or a suffering 

 person that the state of mind we call sympathy usually 

 arises; 18 indeed, it is often contrary to one's sense of 

 right, and in spite of one's will, that "fellow-feeling 

 makes us wondrous kind," or the reverse. However 

 complete may be the indifference to public opinion, in 

 a cool, intellectual view, of the traditional sage, it has 

 not yet been my fortune to meet with any actual sage 

 who took its hostile manifestations with entire equa- 

 nimity. Indeed, I doubt if the philosopher lives, or ever 

 has lived, who could know himself to be heartily despised 

 by a street boy without some irritation. And, though 

 one cannot justify Haman for wishing to hang Mordecai 

 on such a very high gibbet, yet, really, the conscious- 

 ness of the Vizier of Ahasuerus, as he went in and out 

 of the gate, that this obscure Jew had no respect for 

 him, must have been very annoying. 19 



18 Adam Smith makes the pithy observation that the man who 

 sympathises with a woman in childbed, cannot be said to put 

 himself in her place. ("The Theory of the Moral Sentiments," 

 Part vii. sec. iii. chap, i.) Perhaps there is more humour than 

 force in the example; and, in spite of this and other observations 

 of the same tenor, I think that the one defect of the remarkable 

 work in which it occurs is that it lays tod much stress on con- 

 scious substitution, too little on purely reflex sympathy. 

 [T. H. H.] 



19 Esther v. 9-13. "... but when Haman saw Mordecai in 

 the king's gate, that he stood not up, nor moved for him, he 

 was full of indignation against Mordecai. . . . And Haman told 

 them of the glory of his riches . . . and all the things wherein 



